This essay is my feeble attempt to look for a reasonable argument for traditional marriage which can be used in discussions with non-Christians. The context of the matter is this: most of us DBU people believe that marriage is a one man, one woman thing, and most of us believe that everyone should agree with us. The confusing thing is that although we’re quite sure they should agree with us, the main reason we believe this is because we believe the Bible. But the people we want to agree with us don’t always believe the Bible. What we need is an argument that will convince people who are not Bible-believers that marriage really is a one man, one woman thing. We need something with which we can communicate and debate with people who don’t believe the Bible.

The easiest solution would be if we had a natural law argument for marriage, like some we have for the pro-life stance: for instance, the argument that our human DNA is one thing that makes us human and since DNA is complete at conception and since everyone agrees that it’s wrong to kill humans, abortion is wrong.

Natural law arguments for marriage are not an original idea; people have been talking about this for a long, long time. Maybe it would be something like saying that all cultures in the world consider man-woman marriage natural. What I’m talking about is something slightly different. It’s hard to know how to classify my argument in this essay, but maybe we can call it a cross between a natural law argument and a Plantingan argument.

The bizarre adjective Plantingan comes from the philosopher Alvin Plantinga. Most of the philosophers I like, like most of the authors, are dead, but this one is alive and kicking at Notre Dame university. Probably his most important contribution is his discussion of reformed epistemology, my summary of which follows (the big words in italics are not very important; you don’t need to remember them).

Plantinga’s theory is a disagreement with what’s called classical foundationalism. According to this theory, most of the things we believe should be logically based on other beliefs which are based on other beliefs which are . . . based on properly basic beliefs , the beliefs at the very foundation of what we believe. These sort of beliefs have to be self-evident beliefs like 2 + 2 = 4, or beliefs obvious to our five senses like ‘the sky is blue’, or incorrigible beliefs (I always have to look that one up). Our belief in God has to be based on these beliefs.

Plantinga is a freakin’ genius. He asks such a beautiful question: Why can’t the existence of God be a properly basic belief? Anyone? Why not? (Bueler, Bueler?) Plantinga goes into a lot of detail about why there’s no reason to think it can’t be, but those aren’t so important at the moment.

So, anyways, the first idea I had for a natural law argument for marriage was to logically prove marriage based on other beliefs. I’m pretty sure these arguments will work just fine, but while I was trying to figure out what some of them were, I said to myself, “Is there any reason why we shouldn’t just say we know marriage is one man, one woman?”

So here’s my suggestion: as the idea that we have to prove the existence of God based on other beliefs is to Plantinga’s question why we can’t call God’s existence a properly basic belief . . . so the idea that we need to prove marriage based on other beliefs is to the question: why can’t the belief that marriage is one man, one woman be a properly basic belief?

Why can’t natural marriage be a properly basic belief? Why can’t we (who, most of us, believe in the Bible and are motivated by that in our defense of marriage) just say we know that marriage is one man, one woman? Someone prove us wrong. So what if it’s not easy (I didn’t say it was impossible) for me to prove it to someone else? It’s at least as difficult for someone else to prove me wrong.

But doesn’t this just kill our communication with other people? Not really. For one thing, as regards communication and dialogue we can ask them if they don’t just know, or never actually just knew, that marriage, romance, and sex between a man and a woman is natural?

And as for the political debate that seems to be just heating up, look at it this way: pretend (extreme case) that some of us say we know that marriage is one man, one woman and some people say we know that marriage is not always one man, one woman? Well, how do we solve this deadlock? Besides the fact that the vast majority agree with the Bible on this one, the fact is that the Bible’s position is the status quo. If the positions were gridlocked, we should be very careful to alter the status quo as the gay agenda is attempting to do.

Finally, what’s more likely is not the situation I just described. I could be wrong, of course, but the impression I get is that most people don’t say we know that marriage is not one man, one woman. I think most people who disagree with me on this would say, “I disagree with you that marriage always has to be one man, one woman.” That’s somewhat different from saying they know that it can be one man, one man or one woman, one woman. What they’re thinking (what I’m pretty sure they’re thinking) is that I’m not supposed to impose my morality on them. They’re saying that there’s no morality of marriage that applies to everyone. Well, I say there is. Prove me wrong. You can’t, because the only way you can deny universal morality is to espouse the universal morality of tolerance. Can I prove you wrong? Maybe not. But if I’m claiming something like one man, one woman marriage applies to everyone and (even though you think I’m wrong) you’re not actually making any statement to the contrary. That’s not a gridlock. That’s my advantage.

From my perspective I can see that one man, one woman marriage is a fact. From their perspective there are no contrary facts. There is only the questioning of my fact. It’s one thing if we both claim to have properly basic beliefs, but I’m the only one claiming that.

That’s not a gridlock. That’s our advantage. It’s one thing to find reasons enough to prove something to other people, and another to find reasons enough to impose something on other people. This argument gives us the latter: it’s enough to make sure we’re right. It may not give us the former, but that’s ok. Because the Plantingan defense of natural marriage says that we can know we’re right, even though it’s not always easy to prove it to other people.